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JUNEAU, Alaska -- Stevens, who was Senate president last year when Parnell's bill died in the Senate, urged his fellow senators to be cautious about trusting the oil industry, given its history in the state: he cited three major events, the Amerada Hess court case in the 1970s where a judge ruled the industry cheated Alaska out of nearly $1 billion, the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, and the Veco corruption scandal of 2006.
"Those three events are not the only abuses we have experienced -- they're just the three you cannot forget," Stevens said. "There is really no hurry to make a decision today, or really this session. It's better to get it right than do it quickly, with questions unanswered and with results unknown. This bill gives away too much to the major oil companies who are producing oil in the legacy fields at Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk. Those fields seem to be doing just fine under the current tax policies and are enormously profitable to the industry. ... This body has decided to place enormous trust in an industry that has often proved itself to be untrustworthy. To believe the industry will indeed substantially increase oil throughput without a (sunset provision) if that does not happen, I appreciate your purity of heart."
"Let's kill this bill today, let's start from scratch," said Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage. Like several other opponents, he then referred to an interview in the Juneau Empire by a leading supporter of the bill, Sen. Kevin Meyer, R-Anchorage, who called the chances of more development "a crapshoot."
"I've heard this bill called a crapshoot," Wielechowski continued. "Is that we're down to, basing our public policy on a gamble, basing a bill that moves billions of dollars across the table to the oil industry, on a crapshoot? Basing our ability to fund teachers, troopers, VPSOs, roads, bridges, on a crapshoot? Basing the future of Alaska on a crapshoot? Is that what we're down to?"
"ACES doesn't work and something has to be done," said Sen. Pete Kelly, R-Fairbanks. "This bill does something, I think it does something very good. The biggest thing it does for me is it tells me we don't have to accept failure as our destiny. We don't have to have future of decline. I don't want to look my kids in the eye and say when I stepped out of high school in 1974, the world was my oyster. ... Sorry, to you, we spent it all and when we were faced with the tough decision of changes in things that maybe looked like we were in the pocket of the oil companies, we didn't have the guts to do the right thing so that you, my kids, and all your kids, so that you guys could have the same kind of future that we had. I just hope you'll all vote yes."
